Gaming Masculinity: Trolls, Fake Geeks and the Gendered Battle for Online Culture. Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics. Retrieved February 28, 2021, from īrown, W. How Video Games Are Fueling the Rise of the Far Right. Brewster (Trans.), Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (pp. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. That’s why it is worth getting our hands dirty by removing the engine cover to inspect the ideological machinery controlling these digitized devices of metal and flesh. A game in which your existence and occupation are so intertwined reads like a digital reproduction of neoliberal rationality which normalizes the populace conducting their lives as a series of “rational business decisions.” F1 2018 is about much more than pretending to drive fast machines in exotic locales, but so too is the real F1. More significantly, players must actually manage their own careers for example, how you choose to answer a reporter’s question about your performance can affect team politics or create rivalries which may increase the pressure, thus the difficulty, placed upon one’s personal gameplay. In order to be a successful player, an “authentic” participant, you are also expected to acquire the necessary “human capital” which allows you to interact with the car’s mechanical technology by making adjustments at a headache-inducing granular level to set up a winning ride. However, there is more to F1 2018 than simply winning races. Racing in expensive cars with engines built by major manufacturers-some of them categorized as luxury brands-obviously implicates players in the service of naturalizing competition and commodity desire.
The focus will be on elements unique to this game (both the narratological and the ludic) which engage a particular mindset jibing with a neoliberal perspective.
In this light, I will analyse the imbued beliefs and values contained in F1 2018 that potentially mark a fan as a specific ideological subject. It appears that racing-game fans have tended to sidestep the online culture war skirmishes of recent years in which many self-identifying gamers participated (e.g., Gamergate in 2014), reveling in misogyny and reactionary politics ranging from anarcho-capitalism to outright fascism. This chapter explores the topic of ideological interpellation via F1 2018, the sole officially licensed Formula One Racing video game.
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